Embracing the Darkness
by Sakura Katana
Summary: Annie/Abed for the prompt "Darkest Timeline." Evil Abed visits Annie in the mental hospital. When the world gets bad enough, the smart go bad.


Abed visits Annie in the mental hospital shortly after he becomes Evil Abed. As usual, she's curled up in the corner of her room, looking pale and helpless in her straight jacket. Usually he feels bad for her, and hates that he doesn't know how to comfort her without copying TV. Now that he's Evil, though, he knows exactly what to do.

Annie looks up when he enters the room. Her eyes are red. It's adorable. "H-hey Abed," she says, sniffling. "Where's Troy?"

"I came without him," Evil Abed says. "He's got the enthusiasm I need, but not the brains. Or the ambition."

"What do you mean?" Annie asks, sitting up straight. "And why are you wearing a… felt goatee?"

Good. He's got her attention. "This is my evil goatee. I'm Evil Abed now."

Annie laughs. "And they tell me _I'm_ crazy."

"You're not crazy," Evil Abed says. "You've just embraced the truth. When we rolled the dice to see who should get the pizza" – Annie flinches at the mention of that night – "we created six different timelines. I never should have let Jeff roll it, but I did. And by doing that, I inadvertently created the darkest and most terrible timeline. It's not your fault Pierce died, Annie. It's mine. Well, really it was Abed's."

Annie leans forward, the shadow of her old, burned out compassion on her face. "But you _are _Abed. No matter what shape of fabric you stick on your face."

Evil Abed nods in somewhat reluctant agreement. "It's true. He'll always be a part of me, the part that was in the past. Abed was holding me back, but now that he's seen the true nature of our reality, he decided to let me drive."

Annie leans back into her corner. "Great," she says sarcastically. "I'm so glad you finally found yourself, Abed."

"No, you're not."

"Of course I'm not!" Annie shouts. "How could you possibly think this matters? After all we've been through?"

"Why shouldn't I think it matters?" Evil Abed asks, intrigued at this response. Maybe all this solitude had molded Annie in a different way than he thought it would. He thought she was broken and needed a cause in order to be rebuilt. Maybe Annie already rebuilt herself, taped the warped pieces together here in her lonely little corner so she could survive this new, darker world. She always was a fighter. He had underestimated her.

Annie slouches back to the wall once again. "Because whether you're good or evil… it doesn't matter. You can carry a weapon to protect yourself, but the universe can decide to screw you over and make it kill your friend, and there's nothing you can do about it. There's nothing any of us can do about anything. It's random chance that brings us into the world, and it's random chance that can take us out."

She's unhinged, he realizes. Annie embraced the darkness before he even discovered it was there to embrace. Now that he thinks about it and really looks at her, that's hot. Hot, hot, hot. _Annie's_ hot. Which makes her an even better partner in carrying out his plan than he originally thought.

"As much as I love your total abandonment of morality, you're wrong," Evil Abed says.

Annie gives him a look. He would enjoy seeing her give that look to someone they were interrogating together, possibly in a secret underwater lair or a spaceship. But he's getting ahead of himself.

"You're right that we were screwed over by random chance, but there was something I could have done to stop it that night, and there's something we can do to change it now."

Annie's ignoring him. He leans forward and grabs her face, forcing them to look each other in their cold, dead eyes.

"But you said we're in the darkest, most terrible timeline," Annie says, holding his gaze.

"We are. We were stuck with the crappiest outcome of the situation," Evil Abed tells her. "But we have one advantage: we _know_. All the other timelines are blissfully unaware of our existence."

Annie's eyes widen. "Are you saying we should – we should sneak attack the other timelines? Are you saying we should kill them?"

Evil Abed smiles and lets go of her face. "I like the way you think, but no one said anything about killing. No, what we need to do is darken them. In this timeline, the darkness is in control of us. In the others, especially the brightest, we can control it."

Annie nods in obvious dawning comprehension. "And if we do that, we can win. We can beat the universe!"

"Exactly."

"Oh my god!" she exclaims enthusiastically. "Abed – I mean, _Evil _Abed – we can do this! All we have to do is find out which timeline is the brightest, remove Troy from that timeline, and give them the same set of circumstances that made us the darkest! We can get Britta to dye her hair-"

"Replace their Abed with me-" Evil Abed says.

"Reintroduce Shirley to her old friend alcoholism-"

"Cut off Jeff's arm…"

Annie laughs evilly at the thought of the man who abandoned her, who never visited her in the mental hospital because of his own guilt and regained apathy about the world, in pain. None of his perfectly fitting clothes would fall right on him ever again, in multiple timelines!

"But how do we get to them?" Annie asks. "No, don't tell me, I know this…" She's stumped, then suddenly it comes to her. "Oh my god, of course. We use-"

"The Dreamatorium," Evil Abed says with her, then adds, "Our minds are the only viable portals between the timelines. Non-imaginary technology hasn't caught up yet."

"Awesome," says Annie, grinning. "But do I have to wear a goatee?"

"No," Evil Abed says, "But you should probably dress differently. Tighter, darker clothes, maybe show some more cleavage. Darker eye makeup, lipstick, that kind of thing."

"Is that the official evil uniform, or just your personal preference?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Abed would never hit on you like that."

"But Evil Abed?"

"He might."

Annie smirks. "And I think Evil Annie might be into that kind of thing."

"Hot. Hot, hot, hot."

"New catchphrase. Nice. Now get me the hell out of this straightjacket."

**A.N. **Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please take a couple seconds to **review**, especially **if you want the story to be continued!**


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